The International Hockey League began play in the winter of 1945-46 with four teams in Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario. By the early 1950’s, the Canadian clubs had largely faded away and the IHL became a Midwestern bus league for much of its 56-year existence, with cities like Flint, Ft. Wayne, Muskegon and Toledo forming the league’s backbone.

That began to change in 1984, when the IHL absorbed several clubs from the folding Central Hockey League, including the CHL’s former Salt Lake City, Utah club, the Golden Eagles. Salt Lake is over 1,600 miles from what was then the IHL’s easternmost franchise in Toledo, Ohio. Major market expansion got under way in the late 1990’s and a speculative bubble in franchise valuations came along with it. In 1984, the IHL’s Muskegon Mohawks club sold to new ownership for $1.00. A decade later in 1994 the league’s expansion fee was $6 million and the small market Midwestern clubs like Muskegon, Flint and Saginaw had largely fallen away as the IHL planted flags in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, Orlando, San Francisco and beyond.

The IHL’s relationship with the NHL soured during the 1990’s, partly due to expansion into NHL markets like Chicago and Detroit. NHL clubs began shifting their farm club affiliations away from the IHL, depriving the league of crucial subsidies just as the league’s operational costs with cross-continental air travel and big city living exploded. The expansion bubble popped in the mid-1990’s after fees topped out around $7 million and the league went into a financial free fall in the latter part of the decade.

The IHL folded in the early summer of 2001. Six franchise – the Chicago Wolves, Grand Rapids Griffins, Houston Aeros, Manitoba Moose, Milwaukee Admirals and Utah Grizzlies – continued on and were absorbed into the American Hockey League.